Ten Things You Didn’t Know about ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ (2012)

April 3, 2025 by Leave a Comment

A good friend last week wrote to me saying that he had been invited to give a talk about Harry Potter at a local bookstore and he was flummoxed about how to introduce the ring composition idea without using PowerPoint slides projected on a screen. The bookstore didn’t have a projector or a screen or even a blank wall.

I was in exactly the same position in 2012 when I gave a series of “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About [Each of the Harry Potter titles]” at Oklahoma City’s wonderful independent bookstore, Full Circle. Incredibly, that talk was recorded and I still have a copy to embed here to illustrate my solution to the problem: hook your laptop up to a large flat screen television set and put it on the table next to where you’re speaking. For a crowd of thirty or less, if you’ve made the slides with a large typeface, it works like a dream.

I post this tonight to say to my friend, “If I could do this in 2012 without any technical assistance while maintaining full Luddire status, you can do this in 2025 while standing on your head and juggling” (he is very accomplished at all things technological and computers).

And, no, I have not watched this video through, and, yes, I disavow everything I said that is contrary to what I have learned and said in the almost decade and a half since I put that talk together!

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

The Rowling Library: Issue #100 Checks In at 100 Pages! A Real Celebration

April 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Patricio Tarantino, founder and editor of The Rowling Library e-zine, has knocked himself out for Issue #100 with not only an outrageous quantity of pages, a centenary one hundred, but with extraordinary quality as well. In addition to articles from TRL’s regulars — A. Dalla Palma, Rio Romero, Iris T. M., Oliver Horton, and several pieces from Patricio — Issue #100 features articles from Hogwarts Professor writers Nick Jeffery and Beatrice Groves, each contributing a signature piece from their research focus (Nick writes about the importance of the English class system in Potter and Strike and Dr Groves speculates about the epigraphs of Hallmarked Man and their possible alchemical meaning).

The only downside to the issue? It begins with a history of the magazine produced by The Rowling Library, which group also hosts a remarkable website of resources for Potter Pundits and publishes non-fiction works that focus on subjects of great interest to Rowling’s international audience. This introductory history ends with its author, Patricio Tarantino, admitting that Issue #100 may be the last hurrah for the e-zine. He writes:

This milestone—issue number 100—arrives at a crossroads. It could well be our final issue, closing a chapter that has spanned nearly a  decade of dedication and passion. Or perhaps there will be a #101 appearing in May, just four weeks from now, continuing our monthly journey through the Wizarding World. The honest truth is that I don’t know yet which path I’ll take. The decision will come later, after we’ve had time to reflect on what these 100 issues have meant and where our energies might best be directed going forward.

For now, what matters most is celebrating what we’ve accomplished together—contributors and readers alike—in creating 100 issues dedicated to exploring, analyzing, and celebrating the work of one of the most influential and important writers of our times. Whether this marks an end or just another chapter, what truly matters is that we enjoyed every step of this magical journey together.

I hope the TRL team will consider publishing six issues a year rather than twelve or some other method of keeping the e-zine coming, though I appreciate the hard to believe labors of assembling issues with remarkable content of lasting value in a format that is simultaneously attractive and engaging.

Download the pdf of Issue #100 here or just start reading it. Congratulations to Mr Tarantino and the TRL regulars on passing the mammoth milestone of 100 issues with such grace and flair and many thanks for the many hours of challenging and instructive reading to be found in each new issue and the archives.

Filed Under: Rowling Library

Sunrise on the Reaping: First Trailer?

April 1, 2025 by Leave a Comment

I thought it was a fan creation, but it’s from Lionsgate’s YouTube channel.

The Hollywood Gamesmakers are hard at work, it seems, to prepare us for their re-writing Sunrise, the way they have recast every one of the films to make themselves into the action figure heroes rather than the agents of the regime’s hijacking of everything good and meaningful in Panem.

See ‘Gamesmakers Hijack Story: Capitol Wins Hunger Games Again’ for more on that. Or ‘Hunger Games’ Theme Park in China.

Oh, well! Here’s more Gamesmaker takes on the Sunrise movie…

Filed Under: Hunger Games Tagged With: , ,

Meanwhile Back in the Rowling Universe

March 31, 2025 by 3 Comments

It has been two weeks since the publication of Sunrise on the Reaping and almost all posts here at Hogwarts Professor have been about the second prequel novel of Suzanne Collins, her fifth Hunger Games effort.

What has happened in the world of J. K. Rowling, also known as Robert Galbraith, in that time?

Judging from her twitter feed, not very much — except for victory laps and scalp taking in the Trans Wars, as that conflict winds down. Her Gender Critical views, once considered radioactive and the height of bigotry, are now sweeping the Public Square. There has been little to no news about Harry Potter or Cormoran Strike for weeks but there have been tweet after tweet about the remnant resistance to “Reality Based” medicine, especially on the political left, about abuse of women in Islamic countries (not to include ‘Asian’ grooming gangs in the UK), and even a little support for Ukraine in response to the United States telling Zelensky the free ride is over (TDS? Check).

There is good news in this. The best of that good news is Rowling’s claim on 3 March (above) that her activity on Twixter is a very, very small part of her day’s labors, 90% of which is dedicated to writing her novels.

The almost as good news in her communication this month with her 14 million+ followers is that her battle with Gender Theory Extremists has largely been won, in no small part due to her sacrificial efforts of resistance to the nightmare that was “transgenderism” at its peak. Her tweets on this subject are now bold, brassy, and largely unforgiving with respect to those who rode the wave of popular opinion and scientistic propaganda.

One tweet that touched on friends from the Potter franchise who threw her under the Knight Bus in conformity with the TWAW Herd caused a grand kerfuffle: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

Sunrise on the Reaping: #1 Best Seller

March 30, 2025 by Leave a Comment

If you had any doubts about the continuing popularity of the Hunger Games franchise, sales of Sunrise on the Reaping should put those concerns to rest. I don’t think that the Panem Trilogy and prequels have any chance of supplanting the Harry Potter novels as the ‘Shared Text’ of the early 21st Century; I cannot think of a fictional work by a living writer, however, that has a greater following and appeal than does Suzanne Collins. Dan Brown may sell a lot of books but his work hasn’t become part and parcel with rebellions around the world:

Sales for Sunrise have been spectacular, not to mince words.

It’s #1 on Amazon.com, the world’s largest bookstore:

No big deal? According to one source, not only is Sunrise #1 today but it is the best selling book on Amazon for the first quarter of 2025 though it has only been in circulation for ten days.

It’s #1 by a large margin, too, at Publisher’s Weekly:

Hungry for More

Suzanne Collins has the #1 book in the country—by a factor of 10—withSunrise on the Reaping, her second Hunger Games prequel. It’s set 40 years after the events of the first prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which has sold 1.8 million copies in hardcover since its 2020 publication. (Two trade paper editions have sold another 860K copies.) Sunrise is a “brutal tale of compassion and rage,” per our starred review, “and a frank examination of propaganda and tragedy.”

The New York Times, per its Harry Potter Panic Policy that created in 2000 a separate Best Seller list for ‘Children and Young Adult Series’ to keep the Boy Wizard from dominating the Fiction category’s four top places, does not list Sunrise anywhere on its several Best Seller lists. Folded into the Hunger Games series, however, it is #1 on the YA Series list, and, though, invisible, I think can safely be assumed to be #1 in all hardcover fiction (Scholastic does not publish an e-Book simultaneously with its Hunger Games new releases.

 

Lionsgate no doubt is pleased and I suspect sales of Sunrise in various formats will continue strong, sustained by the aiding winds of periodic announcements of casting choices for the second prequel’s more important roles. Do you think they’ll put Jennifer Lawrence under a blonde wig to play her 16 year old mother, Astrid? The Gamesmakers have probably already made her an offer, though she’d be better suited to play Willamae Abernathy, Haymitch’s long-suffering Ma.

Even the conjecture stories will boost book sales, which, as of today, don’t need a lift. The legend continues to grow, as does the pressure for at least one more prequel, presumably the Plutarch Heavensbee story.

Filed Under: Hunger Games Tagged With: , ,